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Frances F. Denny | “Fading world of WASP culture,” The New York Times

From Katie Booth’s article about Frances F. Denny’s series “Let Virtue Be Your Guide” for The New York Times blog Women in the World:

To be labeled WASP served as a jumping off point for Denny in examining her family’s privileged place in history, and its implications. “It was a word I was familiar with but rarely used myself. But something rang true about it,” she told Women in the World. “I became interested in ‘WASP’ as a cultural category, and began photographing my relatives to try to understand it. The word carries baggage, and no doubt to some, it’s downright pejorative,” she said. “For me though, it’s a useful term. The messiness of what it connotes approaches a more truthful answer to that favorite American question of ‘what are you?’”

It’s exactly that messiness that makes Denny’s work, rife with contradiction, so impactful. In one photo, a young girl with milky skin looks complacently at the camera from a floral, pastel bedroom. In another, light falls gently onto a faded blue carpet speckled with an aged and permanent set of stains. “I became particularly aware of not making things look too pretty, like a Ralph Lauren advertisement, for example, and to instead show something threadbare, stained, or worn-away,” she said. “I looked carefully at these surfaces and these people to see past the beautiful, composed veneers.”